Mumbai’s next mayor will be a woman from the general category, following a lottery conducted by the Maharashtra Urban Development Department on Thursday, an official said.
The Shiv Sena (UBT)'s hopes of securing the Mumbai mayoral post were dashed after the lottery draw, as it had pinned its chances on the possibility of the post being reserved for a Scheduled Tribe (ST) woman, as both eligible candidates in that category belonged to Uddhav Thackeray's party.
In the January 15 elections, the BJP won 89 seats in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), while the Shiv Sena led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde secured 29, taking the alliance past the halfway mark of 114 required to control India's largest and richest civic body.
The lottery determines the category for which the mayor's post will be reserved, such as general, women, SC, ST, and OBC categories.
Once the category is announced, eligible candidates file their nominations.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and former Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar opposed the lottery procedure, claiming that the rules to arrive at the decision were changed without informing anyone.
She said the last two city mayors were from the general category, so the new mayor should have been from the Other Backward Classes (OBC).
Pednekar also alleged that the ST category was excluded from the lottery system. "We condemn the way the procedure (of lottery) was conducted. The procedure was fixed," Pednekar charged.
Congress Legislature Party leader Vijay Wadettiwar also alleged the lottery system was "fixed" and done in an opaque manner. However, Minister of State for Urban Development, Madhuri Misal, rejected the charge. "We completed the procedure as per the law," she asserted.
(With inputs from PTI)